Information Technology (IT) companies and departments who support their customers' computer systems are constantly challenged with the need to provide timely and cost-effective support to their customers. Remote support provides the means for IT professionals to remotely access and to control customers' computer systems. This eliminates the need for the IT professionals to travel on-site to fix a problem and the delays in response time.
Enterprises (or organizations) have many challenges when receiving support from a technology vendor via remote control or remote access technologies. When a system or application requires support and maintenance from a vendor, the vendor must be granted access in order to service the system or application effectively. Often, each technology vendor uses a different product, leaving the organization receiving support with little or no control over what remote access or remote control technologies are used. Most remote access and remote control tools support only “all or nothing” access, resulting in the vendor having much greater access than is required. Because of this, the organization receiving support does not have the ability to granularly control the permissions, access, and privileges granted to the technology vendor. Moreover, existing approaches do not record the activity of the technology vendor in the process of supporting the organization that is receiving support. In other words, support incidents do not have audit trails. This lack of control and lack of audit-ability undermines the compliance posture of the organization receiving support, thereby increasing the liability associated with receiving technology support from a vendor.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for approaches that provide remote support and management involving multiple vendors.